Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005130005
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On the same day in Georgia, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit in federal court challenging a similar runoff-primary system in that state.
Four days earlier in Arkansas, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an NAACP lawsuit challenging that state's runoff primary.
The three events - connected by coincidence of timing and region - raise thorny legal, political and racial issues that are likely to shape the course of elections in the South as more blacks seek statewide office.
Like most difficult questions of law, this one boils down to a clash of competing equities. One is the right of political parties to adopt rules that ensure they nominate the strongest possible candidate; the other is the right of racial minorities not to have their votes diluted by election laws that discriminate against them.
Only nine states - eight of them in the South - have laws that require a candidate to compete in a two-person runoff if he or she fails to win a majority.
Civil-rights groups argue that runoff primaries are "a major impediment to black political development because of the pernicious role that racial bloc voting plays in the United States and particularly the South," in the words of Eddie Williams, head of the Joint Center for Political Studies, a think tank that specializes in issues affecting blacks.
Not all blacks share that view.
In Georgia, where former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, the latest Atlanta Constitution poll shows him leading four white rivals with 29 percent of the vote. Elimination of the majority-vote requirement would increase his chances of winning the nomination, but Young said he opposes the ACLU lawsuit. "I'm not interested in only winning the Democratic primary," he said. "I am interested in being governor."
"I think deep in his heart he knows we are doing the right thing, but he finds it uncomfortable politically to air his true feeling at this time," responded state Rep. Tyronne Brooks, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. Brooks said the ACLU will ask the federal courts to restrain Georgia from conducting its July 17 primary under the runoff law.
So far, no court has issued a ruling that has stood up on appeal striking down a majority-vote rule.
The political implications of such lawsuits are potentially profound. The states of the Deep South have populations ranging between 15 percent and 35 percent black. If runoff primaries were eliminated, blacks would be well-positioned to win plurality victories in multicandidate statewide Democratic primaries. But assuming racial-bloc voting persists, they would have trouble winning general elections. The net effect could be to strengthen the Republican Party in the South.
by CNB